


Rescue

by vvorlock



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: BPD Lance, Depictions of mental breakdowns, Isolation, KLANCE WEEK AGAIN, Klance Week 2016, M/M, Post Season 1, Slow Burn, home sickness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-25 08:12:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7525051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vvorlock/pseuds/vvorlock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The wormhole hadn’t been very kind to Lance and the Blue lion. Lance half expected to come out a few feet from crashing into a planet, or that something exciting would happen as the g-force violently shook the lion. Lance would yell something intelligent, daring even, before pulling out of the spin and landing safely on a new planet. Best case scenario, it was a beach planet covered in alien beach babes in crazy alien bathing suits enjoying the warm water. Maybe the sand would be cool alien sand that didn’t stick to you when wet.</p><p>A boy can dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rescue

**Author's Note:**

> For Klance week, day 4! My chosen theme was "Rescue" since it was a free day

The wormhole hadn’t been very kind to Lance and the Blue lion. Lance half expected to come out a few feet from crashing into a planet, or that something exciting would happen as the g-force violently shook the lion. Lance would yell something intelligent, daring even, before pulling out of the spin and landing safely on a new planet. Best case scenario, it was a beach planet covered in alien beach babes in crazy alien bathing suits enjoying the warm water. Maybe the sand would be cool alien sand that didn’t stick to you when wet.

A boy can dream.

He still had to pull out of a spin, but it did not take long to come to a stop and look around. Lots of stars, nebulas, and galaxies were in sight, but line of sight meant next to nothing in fucking space.

“Where-where are we? Hello? Anyone?” Lance felt that staying calm was the best option at present and began to try and toggle on the visual comms, only to receive silence and occasional static. From every single comm. He couldn’t even reach the Castle.

“Fuck- shit Blue where are we? Where is everyone else?” He sat forward and began to hit buttons that felt right on the holographic console, hoping something would create a connection. The lion hummed, sound resonating through the metal structures. The cool breeze that wafted through the blue lion was always refreshing, but it felt forlorn this time, and chilled Lance to the core.

“What do you mean too far? Too far from what? The others? Yeah I got that-“ And then he saw a quick snapshot, in his mind, of the lion’s radar stretching out across the cosmos and not coming into contact with anything once. They were lost in a pocket of deep space, with no notable celestial bodies in range, and no one to hear them call for help.

That was when the first panic set in.

As blinding as the one that that set in when Lance’s older sister accidentally locked him in the freezer at the family restaurant. Everything tunneled and grew sharp. The air stung and burned in Lance’s throat and lungs, it didn’t seem like enough oxygen was getting in despite how light headed he began to get from the excited breathing. Hands shaking on the lion’s controls, gripping so tight blood drained form his hands.

“It’s going to be fine it’s going to be fine-“ The mantra was supposed to calm him, but the paladin found himself unable to stop repeating the words as the cockpit began to spin and rock around him. Even Blue’s attempts to send calming images to her paladin did nothing to quell the shaking and hyperventilating. Concerned, the lion redirected it’s trajectory with a quick burst from the rear propulsion thrusters and took off toward what appeared to be the closest thing they could land on. The lion knew this had happened before with her newest partner and had a bit of an idea as to how to help.

The first time Lance had an episode was only about a week after they had met. The lion had felt a shift in atmosphere as the paladin climbed into the cockpit in the dead of night. He was quiet, inside and out, which was unlike him. He sat in the cockpit for a couple of hours, staring dead into the console as various gauges flowed and gave system reports in real time. Blue, concerned about the distance she felt in his thoughts, offered up images of the vast oceans on Earth. She did not, however, expect the reaction she had triggered in Lance. The rapid thoughts, the hysterics, the shaking and compulsive movements.

It took some quiet advice from Black to explain the situation to the blue lion. Apologetic, she revved up the turbines and let the thrumming resonate until her young paladin fell asleep curled up in the pilot’s seat.

The latest attack slowly released Lance, withdrawing it’s harsh claws from his chest and head to return to the back of his mind. And he laid there, exhausted, barely conscious, and completely empty in the pilot’s seat. The pulsing sensation from the robot’s energy core began to lull him back into a calm and quiet state. He stared out the virtual viewing port at what felt like a flat simulation.

“Do you think they’ll ever find us?”

——

Lance was terrible at keeping track of time even with a clock in his hands, so it was no surprise that he gave up on having any semblance of a sleep schedule as he rocketed through the emptiness of the void. A void that felt crushing and all encompassing. If he thought too long and hard about it, his breath would leave and the sensation of shattered glass would return to his chest. His lion had gone silent, no suggestions or images offered as they continued on what felt like a hopeless journey. Time passed, and Lance began to question why time even bothered anyway.

He collapsed in the back of the cockpit, back against a wall and stared at the helmet in his hands. The comms were nothing but static, yet he couldn’t bring himself to turn them off. He could sometimes pretend he could hear his friend’s voices again, buried in the cruel white noise. It was difficult coming to terms living in a constantly over stimulated state, but Lance managed. He figured out that talking quietly about biology lessons he had taken or repeating old stories he read growing up helped keep the noise from sounding too devoid of people. If he closed his eyes he could simply pretend he was in a simulation. A test of endurance. The longer he lasted in the pod in ‘deep space’ the better his grade, and clearly all he had to do was beat Keith’s score and he could graduate with honors.

Eventually, even the disassociation couldn’t stop Lance from feeling time’s burden. They were still gliding silently through emptiness and he was low on emergency rations. They had to do something. Anger blossomed in Lance’s chest as he stood. There was no way he’d just lay down and die here. He had friends who needed him, probably. He had planets to protect, if he was truly needed. Planets to visit, if he got the chance. Lance slammed his helmet on harder than he cared to think about and set the pilot’s seat into the active position at the console. He was getting the fuck out of nowhere no matter what.

Blue helped by offering suggestions on ways to extend the range of their distress beacon, however most involved crawling deeper into the body of the lion to manually install spare parts in specific ways. With no choice but to finally take action, Lance dug around the cockpit for every piece of tech his lion directed him to before slipping off the main armour pieces of his flight suit. All he needed where he was going was the black body piece, the thicker parts would just get caught in the maintenance shafts and tunnels.

One of the gear boxes had an old pair of work gloves. Altean craftsmanship, clearly, they had a wonderful grip on them and were also slightly magnetized. Blue said it was to help in zero gravity. Lance grinned and pulled them on. Sure they were big on his hands, but he would manage. The paladin turned on his heel and returned to the main exit door that led into the lion’s mouth. Beside it was a small hatch with an intricate set of manual sealing locks. Thanks to the connection Lance shared with the robot, he easily understood the direction to pull and turn the metal bars to unlatch the entrance to the neck maintenance tunnel. Lance grabbed the tool box in one hand and a small bucket full of various tech contraptions with his teeth on the handle before slipping sideways into the passage. It was cramped, and Lance thanked whatever god that was cruel enough to saddle him with a disorder decided that he didn’t need to be claustrophobic too.

The corridor consisted of a flexible hard rubber along one side and panels of tech across from it. Not wanting to get caught on the jagged surface of pipes, wires, and various raised panels, Lance pressed his back against the ribbed rubber and worked his was further until he reached an opening. Carefully pulling himself free, the paladin found himself in a small room with what looked like an arm rail surrounded by large tubing where something that glowed faintly blue pulsed through it. A quick note from his lion told him not to touch them, as they could freeze him to death if ruptured.

“Well, at least I know why it’s always so god damn cold in here. Man, why did you pick the guy who grew up on a beach in hot weather as your paladin anyway, Blue? I’m going to start wearing sweaters in- no I’m not going to ‘get used to it’! It’s cold!” Lance grabbed ahold of the railing and pulled himself over onto a small platform barely large enough to stand on bent over. Squatting in front of a large box, Lance quickly noticed that it was actually another, even smaller service corridor.

“Um, Blue? I am. Not going to crawl in there.” He tugged the panel open and saw a dark, square tunnel barely big enough for his shoulders if he wanted to crawl in. The lion whirred a little, trying to convince him that he really could fit, but didn’t have to go all the way in.

“Fine. But if I’m in there and something grabs my legs, I’m going to kill you. I have a gun, remember?” Threatening a giant magic robot lion to a fire fight was probably not one of Lance’s finer impulses. Blue went silent, but he knew she didn’t really take him seriously. Hopefully. And so he slid the tool box and bucket into the shaft ahead of himself before taking a breath and starting to try and fit inside. It was cramped, cold, and dark. The array of multicolored lights at the end was his goal. Thanks to being tall, Lance only had to wiggle up to his hips into the tunnel before he could reach it. Sadly, he had to stay diagonal.

“Blue, it’s too cramped-“ And in a moment he felt gravity release. “Oh, you know that works, thanks.” He closed his eyes for a moment and waited for his brain to forget what direction down had been. His head swam and grew light when he opened his eyes, but that was normal. The metal structure with lights on the seemed to be some sort of black box for the lion which had a special tracker inside that was linked to the life force memories Allura had. If Lance could just agitate the machinery just right, Blue seemed to think she could pick up on Allura or another Lion. Worth a shot. Being cramped into such a small space doing such delicate work eventually got to Lance and he felt himself begin to lose grip on what reality was. Frustrated, he wiped sweat from his forehead and kept working. With a new tube of some kind attached to a weird sphere inside the black box, the tech began to glow a white-blue colour.

“Blue, I’m going to need some help coming down here, I don’t remember things.” Lance frowned at his own terrible description of the disassociation he was in, but Blue seemed to respond. His mind was quickly flooded with a warm sensation, followed by a familiar smile and laughter. Keith. Why did she bring up Keith? Did she know? Probably. Lance to himself and closed his eyes. Everything about Keith was so strangely exaggerated, positive and negative a like. What was that, again? Lance could swear it was something his sister told him about. Something related to what ran in the family. It really didn’t matter, however, because the warmth in Lance’s chest was enough to bring him down. Back to reality. Grinning widely int he dark with reddened cheeks, Lance made his way out of the small tunnel before asking Blue to resume artificial gravity. She did, and then twinged his throughs with Keith’s laugh again. Damn did he miss the sound of Keith’s voice.

And then Blue hit him with yet another image of the red paladin, however, this time it was not of laughter but of shaking. Keith curled up between his pilot seat and the console in the red lion. The room was barely illuminated and some sort of alarm was sounding.

“Oh shit that’s why you showed me Keith, you found him!”

If robot lions could roll their eyes…

——

Keith was pinned down for a few days now. The worm hole decided that shitting him out onto a moon that orbited a galra controlled planet was a good idea. Well, it would have been if Keith’s lion was functional enough to get into a base and get information. Instead, he was stuck hiding in a rocky outcropping to stay out of view of satellites or other orbitals. Keith knew he had to rest before he could go anywhere or repair his lion. A distress call was out of the question so close to an imperial base. He was stranded until some one could find him and offer back up and it was infuriating.

A few patrols had passed by over the following weeks, but they never bothered to get close enough to spot the red lion tucked away from sight. The rations Coran had set up and stored in each of the lions was proving essential, as Keith could not go outside to even try and forage or hunt, if he could even eat anything on the moon. Rations ran low and the few repairs he was able to make to the lion were minimal, nothing that could get Red safely air born and out of range before the Empire spotted them.

The only thing that Keith could even possibly consider a blessing was that he had plenty of time to himself, away from the group. It had been a really long time since he was last able to simply sit back and enjoy some silence without even the threat of some one appearing and trying to talk to him. Of course, the time he didn’t spend resting he spent furious that he was trapped like this. Why did he think going after Zarkon alone was a good idea? Sure saving Shiro was important but, the regret hit him hard while he took care of his bruised ribs.

“What a mess…”

——

Lance nearly cried when a real moon came into view. A real. Physical. Moon. He could walk on ground. He could get out of his lion. Finally.

“FINALLY!” He shouted, flooring it towards the moon, reactivating his lion’s generally dormant engines. She roared to life and took off toward the dark side of the moon. Blue quickly alerted Lance to the galra bases nearby and plotted a quick and quiet route to a spot with a vantage point on Keith’s location. With any luck, they could communicate from there and form a plan. Lance landed carefully near a large stone spire with some sort of fungal growth wreathing its shape.

“Keith.” No response.

“Keith. Hey. Hello? Are you asleep?” Lance huffed. Still no response. “Hey, Blue can you see if his lion is powered up? If it’s not I’ll have to go down there while you hide.” A quick few ticks of the scanner sounded on the console before Lance got a small image of the red lion laying down in the outcropping with no lights on.

“Oh he better not have fucking left. Stay safe, I’m sneaking in.” Lance grabbed his bayard from a pile of belongings crowded to the side of his cockpit and slipped out into the night. He didn’t bother with the white and blue illuminated armor. No need for shit that glowed in the dark when he wanted to actually stay unseen. He wasn’t a distraction this time, he was the infiltration team. Lance offhandedly wondered if Pidge ever got this excited about sneaking into things. The blue paladin slowly crept closer to the top of the next hill, and not too soon. He spotted a small group of maybe six or so Galra soldiers, possibly robots, staking out Keith and Red’s hiding place.

——

Keith scowled as he watched a few soldiers sneak closer and closer to the lion. He had been outside repairing superficial damage and apparently the patrol passed by closer than usual and heard him. Keith summoned his bayard and crouched alongside one of Red’s claws, waiting for the galra to get close enough to stab.

And that was when all hell broke loose. A single blue beam struck down an android, blasting its head clean off. The paladin froze and lowered himself back to the ground and watched, eyes wide and ready for some sort of bounty hunter to appear. However, no one ever showed. Only a few more shots were fired from a distant location. The beams were too fast for Keith to track them, all he could do was watch as the Galra panicked and began to fire at the cliff tops around them as some distant combatant kept picking them off. Keith silently admired the accuracy of each shot, even the one that missed still managed to tear the leg off of- oh. That wasn’t an android.

Keith closed his eyes and turned away. Thankfully, the screaming didn’t last very long. The dust settled soon after and Keith eyed the eerily silent battle field. Whoever had taken out seven Galra without appearing clearly had a good vantage on the area and Keith was not about to walk out and get shot in the eye. The best chance was to stay still and wait until the assailant came to investigate.

Keith’s thighs thanked him and the stranger that the wait wasn’t long. Crouching and staying ready to spring up and out at a moment’s notice is excruciating. The paladin’s legs were burning as a stranger in a sleek black uniform of some kind slipped into the clearing, a large white sniper rifle in hand. They crouched and started to check the soldiers and androids, eventually tearing a scrap of fabric off of one and tied it around their wrist. And Keith took his chance.

The paladin crept out of the shadows and slowly, much to his leg’s chagrin, snuck up behind the man in black. With a shout, Keith lunged, sword out, at the sniper. A familiar voice yelled in return and Keith’s blade clashed with the side of the rifle. And then he saw Lance’s face. Wide eyed, surprised, and covered in dust and grease.

“Wh-what? Keith?” Lance was breathless, and Keith was silent. A complete loss for words. Confronted by Lance, in a tight black outfit, sweating, and showing great skill in something he hadn’t before. A deep, hot sensation bubbled up in Keith’s chest.

“Lance?” He barely had the other’s name out before Lance crushed him in a desperate hug.

“I-I thought- I thought I’d never see anyone again and then Blue caught your scent after I made modifications to the-It doesn’t matter.” Lance laughed, his voice hitching in his throat as he began to cry. Keith lowered and deactivated his bayard before slowly allowing himself to return the hug. Lance buried his face into Keith’s shoulder, tears slowly seeping through the strip of fabric there.

——

The next day, Lance showed Keith how to make the same signal extending modification to the red lion. The day after they worked together repairing more damage. Time flew and they found themselves no longer arguing, simply conversing, even joking with each other. Every boisterous laugh Lance got out of the other caused a blossoming feeling in his chest. Keith couldn’t remember a time where he had laughed so often. On the third day, Red was space worthy.

The two paladins made for the next planet over in the system, one that showed very little activity, one where they could wait in safety.

Lance kept his revelations inside. He could wait for Keith.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm considering doing a couple of drabbles about the last few days. Maybe they'll get added on as chapters. 
> 
> Thanks to tumblr users Kojojam, Castleships, and Apex-Disaster for proof reading!


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